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Best Movies of 1981

The highest-rated films released in 1981, ranked by TMDB user score among titles with at least 500 votes.

📊 A century of movies in numbers 42 titlesavg ★ 6.92 avg 108 min Thriller Action Adventure Comedy

Most watched in 1981

Raiders of the Lost Ark1981 · ★ 7.9 · 1h 55m

Mad Max 21981 · ★ 7.4 · 1h 36m

Escape from New York1981 · ★ 7.0 · 1h 39m

The Fox and the Hound1981 · ★ 7.2 · 1h 22m

An American Werewolf in London1981 · ★ 7.4 · 1h 37m

Das Boot1981 · ★ 8.1 · 2h 30m

← 1980 All years 1982 →

#1 Das Boot (1981) · ★ 8.1 · 2,651 votes · 2h 30m · drama, history, war
A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and t…
#2 Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) · ★ 7.9 · 13,971 votes · 1h 55m · action, adventure
When Dr. Indiana Jones – the tweed-suited professor who just happens to be a celebrated archaeologist – is hired by the government to locate the legendary Ark of the Covenant, he f…
#3 The Marquis of Grillo (1981) · ★ 7.8 · 504 votes · 2h 19m · comedy
In 18th-century Rome, impish aristocrat Onofrio del Grillo amuses himself by playing pranks on all sorts of people — his reactionary family and fellow nobles, the poors, the French…
#4 I'm Starting from Three (1981) · ★ 7.6 · 714 votes · 1h 47m · comedy
Gaetano, a young Neapolitan, decides to leave home, work and friends, to look for other moments of life and meet other people.…
#5 Mad Max 2 (1981) · ★ 7.4 · 4,327 votes · 1h 36m · action, adventure, thriller
Max Rockatansky returns as the heroic loner who drives the dusty roads of a postapocalyptic Australian Outback in an unending search for gasoline. Arrayed against him and the other…
#6 An American Werewolf in London (1981) · ★ 7.4 · 2,728 votes · 1h 37m · comedy, fantasy, horror
American tourists David and Jack are savagely attacked by an unidentified animal while hiking on the Yorkshire Moors. After retiring to the home of a beautiful nurse to recuperate,…
#7 Blow Out (1981) · ★ 7.4 · 1,759 votes · 1h 48m · thriller, crime, mystery
While recording sound effects for a slasher flick, Jack Terry stumbles upon a real-life horror: a car careening off a bridge and into a river. Jack jumps into the water and fishes…
#8 Christiane F. (1981) · ★ 7.3 · 1,488 votes · 2h 11m · drama
A teen girl in 1970s Berlin becomes addicted to heroin. Everything in her life slowly begins to distort and disappear as she befriends a small crew of junkies and falls in love wit…
#9 Possession (1981) · ★ 7.3 · 1,444 votes · 2h 4m · horror
A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. B…
#10 Bianco, rosso e Verdone (1981) · ★ 7.3 · 758 votes · 1h 50m · comedy
Three very different Italians travel to their hometowns on election day: Pasquale, a Southern immigrant living in Munich, finds a country far removed from the one he left behind; R…
#11 On Golden Pond (1981) · ★ 7.3 · 528 votes · 1h 49m · romance, drama
For Norman and Ethel Thayer, this summer on golden pond is filled with conflict and resolution. When their daughter Chelsea arrives, the family is forced to renew the bonds of love…
#12 The Fox and the Hound (1981) · ★ 7.2 · 3,596 votes · 1h 22m · adventure, drama, animation
When a feisty little fox named Tod is adopted into a farm family, he quickly becomes friends with a fun and adorable hound puppy named Copper. Life is full of hilarious adventures…
#13 Thief (1981) · ★ 7.2 · 903 votes · 2h 3m · action, thriller, drama
Frank is an expert professional safecracker, specialized in high-profile diamond heists. He plans to use his ill-gotten income to retire from crime and build a nice life for himsel…
#14 The Professional (1981) · ★ 7.2 · 615 votes · 1h 48m · action, adventure, thriller
Josselin Beaumont, a French secret agent, is tasked with assassinating Njala, the president for life of Malawi in Africa. A shift in French policy means that assassinating Njala is…
#15 La Chèvre (1981) · ★ 7.1 · 739 votes · 1h 34m · comedy, adventure, crime
When the boss' unlucky daughter is missing in South America, Campana is sent to watch the boss' most unlucky employee who is sent as a private detective in hopes he can duplicate t…
#16 Gallipoli (1981) · ★ 7.1 · 575 votes · 1h 52m · drama, history, war
Two Australian sprinters face the brutal realities of war when they are sent to fight in the Gallipoli campaign in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.…
#17 Escape from New York (1981) · ★ 7.0 · 3,657 votes · 1h 39m · action, thriller, science-fiction
In a world ravaged by crime, the entire island of Manhattan has been converted into a walled prison where brutal prisoners roam free. After the US president crash-lands inside, war…
#18 Excalibur (1981) · ★ 7.0 · 1,203 votes · 2h 21m · fantasy, adventure
Arthur fulfills his fate by bringing together the Knights of the Round Table at Camelot and unifying the country. However, this flawed monarch faces greater tests ahead in pursuit…
#19 Body Heat (1981) · ★ 7.0 · 709 votes · 1h 53m · thriller, romance, crime
During an extreme heatwave, a beautiful Florida woman and a seedy lawyer engage in an affair while plotting the murder of her rich husband.…
#20 Quest for Fire (1981) · ★ 7.0 · 582 votes · 1h 40m · fantasy, adventure, drama
In the prehistoric world, a Cro-Magnon tribe depends on an ever-burning source of fire, which eventually extinguishes. Lacking the knowledge to start a new fire, the tribe sends th…
#21 Escape to Victory (1981) · ★ 6.9 · 1,044 votes · 1h 56m · drama, war
A group of POWs in a German prison camp during World War II play the German National Soccer Team in this powerful film depicting the role of prisoners during wartime.…
#22 Clash of the Titans (1981) · ★ 6.9 · 895 votes · 1h 58m · action, fantasy, adventure
To win the right to marry his love, the beautiful princess Andromeda, and fulfil his destiny, half-God-half-mortal Perseus must complete various tasks including taming Pegasus, cap…
#23 Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure (1981) · ★ 6.9 · 697 votes · 1h 42m · action, comedy, adventure
Alan gets a map to some war treasure which the Japanese army left behind on a small Pacific island at the end of World War II. But some gangsters try to steal the map from him and…
#24 The Beyond (1981) · ★ 6.9 · 693 votes · 1h 28m · horror
New Yorker Liza Merril inherits an old hotel in Louisiana and invests her savings to reopen the place, unaware that the hotel houses the body of a dead painter murdered decades ear…
#25 Chariots of Fire (1981) · ★ 6.8 · 1,077 votes · 2h 3m · drama, history
In the class-obsessed and religiously divided UK of the early 1920s, two determined young runners train for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell, a devout Christian born to Scotti…
#26 History of the World: Part I (1981) · ★ 6.8 · 943 votes · 1h 32m · comedy
An uproarious version of history that proves nothing is sacred – not even the Roman Empire, the French Revolution and the Spanish Inquisition.…
#27 Scanners (1981) · ★ 6.7 · 1,438 votes · 1h 43m · horror, science-fiction
A scientist trains a man with an advanced telepathic ability called 'scanning' to stop a dangerous Scanner with extraordinary psychic powers from waging war against non-Scanners.…
#28 Halloween II (1981) · ★ 6.6 · 2,315 votes · 1h 32m · thriller, horror
After failing to kill stubborn survivor Laurie and taking a bullet or six from former psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis, Michael Myers has followed Laurie to the Haddonfield Memorial Hos…
#29 For Your Eyes Only (1981) · ★ 6.6 · 2,164 votes · 2h 8m · action, adventure, thriller
A British spy ship has sunk and on board was a hi-tech encryption device. James Bond is sent to find the device that holds British launching instructions before the enemy Soviets g…
#30 Time Bandits (1981) · ★ 6.6 · 1,190 votes · 1h 56m · comedy, fantasy, adventure
Young history buff Kevin can scarcely believe it when six dwarfs emerge from his closet one night. Former employees of the Supreme Being, they've purloined a map charting all of th…
#31 Stripes (1981) · ★ 6.6 · 1,076 votes · 1h 46m · action, comedy
Hard-luck cabbie John Winger, directionless after being fired from his job and dumped by his girlfriend, enlists in the U.S. Army with his close pal, Russell Ziskey. After his bare…
#32 The Howling (1981) · ★ 6.6 · 933 votes · 1h 31m · horror
After a bizarre and near fatal encounter with a serial killer, a newswoman is sent to a rehabilitation center whose inhabitants may not be what they seem.…
#33 Heavy Metal (1981) · ★ 6.5 · 831 votes · 1h 30m · fantasy, adventure, science-fiction
The embodiment of ultimate evil, a glowing orb terrorizes a young girl with bizarre stories of dark fantasy, eroticism and horror.…
#34 The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) · ★ 6.5 · 580 votes · 2h 2m · thriller, romance, drama
The sensuous wife of a lunch wagon proprietor and a rootless drifter begin a sordidly steamy affair and conspire to murder her Greek husband.…
#35 Porky's (1981) · ★ 6.4 · 1,002 votes · 1h 34m · comedy
In 1954 Florida, a group of high school boys head to a strip club in the Everglades in an attempt to lose their collective virginity. When the club's owner and his sheriff brother…
#36 The Cabbage Soup (1981) · ★ 6.4 · 963 votes · 1h 38m · comedy, science-fiction
Two buddy farmers are visited by aliens who like their domestic cabbage soup.…
#37 Outland (1981) · ★ 6.4 · 732 votes · 1h 50m · action, thriller, science-fiction
On the sunless moon Io, Marshall William T. O’Niel goes toe-to-toe with the corrupt manager of a mining colony and his gang of roughnecks while investigating a rash of worker suici…
#38 My Bloody Valentine (1981) · ★ 6.4 · 575 votes · 1h 30m · thriller, horror, mystery
Twenty years after a Valentine's Day tragedy claimed the lives of five miners, Harry Warden returns for a vengeful massacre among teen sweethearts gearing up for another party.…
#39 Nighthawks (1981) · ★ 6.4 · 514 votes · 1h 39m · action, thriller, crime
When one of Europe's most lethal terrorists shows up in New York, an elite undercover cop is assigned to take him down by any means necessary.…
#40 Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) · ★ 6.2 · 1,986 votes · 1h 26m · thriller, horror
Five years after the horrible bloodbath at Camp Crystal Lake, new counselors roam the area, not sensing the ominous lurking presence that proves that the grisly legend is real.…